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i_read_what2023-08-25 07:14 pm
kalinara) wrote in i_read_what2023-08-25 07:14 pm
Stalking Darkness - Chapter Fourteen
This one's a bit late. Sorry about that! Family was visiting!
Anyway, last time, our heroes were hanging out with Micum in Watermead. Seregil has come to a few realizations, it seems. Of course, he hasn't seen fit to share said realizations with his partner...
This chapter starts by telling us that Alec and Seregil spend three days at Watermead, before sneaking back into the city and to the Cockerel at night. Runcer, we're told, will keep things up at the Wheel Street manor - Lord Seregil's in town but not always available.
...so why sneak in? If the official story is that Seregil is in town, why not enter normally?
I suppose they'd have to sneak over to the Cockerel anyway, though.
Alec definitely seems much more comfortable at the Cockerel than at Wheel Street. We also find out the exact translation for the Aurenfaie password that Seregil uses to access their rooms: "Your grandmother insults the chickens" and "Raspberries, saddle". "Almost."
Alec is pretty amused. He'd once thought the phrases sounded magical.
The last word IS significant though: Bokthersa. That's Seregil's birthplace and kinda-sorta last name.
Seregil is surprised to see that the place has been cleaned up. Alec had done it before he'd left for Wheel Street, when Seregil had been on that mission. He'd done it so he can cross the room safely, having an apparent dislike of stepping on sharp objects or having things fall on his head.
This is pretty cute and domestic:
Seregil collapsed on the sofa in front of the fire. “You know, it strikes me that this is all a bit of a comedown for you. After having your own chamber, I mean. Perhaps we should think about expanding our accommodations here. There are empty rooms on either side of us.”
“Don’t bother on my account.” Yawning, Alec crossed his arms behind his head. “I like things just as they are.”
Seregil smiled up at the shadow of a dusty cobweb wavering overhead. “So do I, now that you mention it.”
Aww.
The downside is that, apparently, jobs are scarce at the moment. Well, yeah, I'd guess they would be. You guys were spending all your time in Wheel Street! How do your clients even know when you're available?
It's also an incredibly dreary late winter. Seregil is getting bored and restless. Alec doesn't seem to have quite as much trouble occupying himself - which makes sense, his life as a hunter probably had a fair amount of forced inactivity due to weather and other factors. But Seregil's restlessness makes it hard to concentrate. Alec finally breaks and suggests that they do some shooting in the back court.
Seregil is apologetic, and decides to go out and get some air instead. Alec offers to go with him, but Seregil demurs. Alec is puzzled: except for that one trip, Seregil usually takes him along. He's not acting like he has a job right now. Alec looks at the parchment that Seregil had been trying to write:
Shelter awhile this poor tattered heart. Cool my brow with your kiss.
Tell me, my love, you will lie with me only. Lie to me all night like this. Sweet is the night, but bitter the waking When the sun harries me home.
Others there’ll be, who drink at your fountain While I toss cold and alone. Yellow as gold, the hair on your pillow, Green as cold emeralds, your eyes.
Dear as the moon, the cost of your favors, Below this half a dozen lines had been struck out with what appeared to be increasing frustration.
The margins of the sheet were filled with half-completed sketches and designs-Illior’s crescent, a perfectly drawn eye, circles, spirals, arrows, the profile of a handsome young man. In the lower left coiner was a quick but unmistakable sketch of Alec scowling comically over his books, which Seregil must have drawn from his reflection in the windowpane.
Ohhh, Seregil is horny.
And Alec is definitely oblivious, because he does not remotely connect the song lyrics with his portrait.
Come to think of it, he’d been restless at Watermead, as well. Those nights they’d shared the guest chamber bed, his friend had often tossed and muttered in his sleep. He hadn’t done that before.
What secrets was he wrestling with?
“Or maybe he’s just pining for his green-eyed mistress?” Alec speculated aloud, scanning the parchment again with an amused chuckle.
Oh, you dear, sweet idiot.
Eventually, Alec realizes that he can go out himself. He starts to head out, though he ends up running into Cilia: the young mother who works at the inn. She's nursing her baby, and we see another glimpse of Alec not being entirely okay with things, when he thinks about how his experience with Ylinestra has altered his reaction to such sights. He feels guilty.
Cilia doesn't seem to notice, but does have him hold baby Luthas for a second so she can switch breasts. Alec definitely gets an eyeful and doesn't know completely how to process it. Though he feels a guilty sort of pleasure replaying it in his mind later.
Ahh, maybe not so asexual after all. Well then!
Alec takes a walk, and finds himself somewhere rather interesting:
Across the busy circle, beyond the pale, templelike fountain colonnade, stood the gracious arch that marked the entrance to the Street of Lights. He’d been down this street many times on the way to the theater and gambling houses there, and Seregil had often jested about stopping in at a brothel afterward, but somehow it had never happened.
He’d never imagined it would. Until now.
The colored lanterns—rose, amber, green, and white—glowed softly through the mist, each color signifying what sort of companionship was available within. Rose meant women for men, he knew, and white was women for women; amber meant a house for women, too, but the prostitutes there were male.
Most enigmatic of all, however, was the green lantern, signifying male companions for male patrons. Worse yet, some houses showed several colors at once.
Enigmatic implies a certain interest, doesn't it? But I think Alec probably needs to work his way up to that. He's got some social programming to work through first, I think.
So anyway, Alec tries to tell himself not to be nervous, while he's pretty obviously nervous. He's not really sure where to go - the color of a lantern is not a lot to go on. Then he hears something interesting:
No doubt Seregil could have suggested a few likely places, but that wasn’t much good to him now. At last, he settled on a house near the middle of the street for no better reason than that he liked the carvings on the door. Just as he was about to go in, however, a door swung open across the street and a group of young men spilled out in a flood of light and music. A man was singing inside, and the voice stopped Alec in his tracks. The clear, lilting tenor was unmistakably Seregil’s.
“Yellow as gold, the hair on your pillow, Green as cold emeralds, your eyes. Dear as the moon, the cost of your favors, But priceless, the sound of your sighs. Well, well! So here you are, thought Alec. And you figured out that last line, too.
Alec wonders "what role [Seregil is] playing", which is an interesting way to look at it. When he creeps his way into the building, he is greeted by the host, a handsome man named Azarin. Azarin is quite welcoming and Alec notices something he missed: the lantern is green.
Ahh. Well. This might be a bit of an eye-opener indeed.
Green, he thought numbly, heart tripping a beat as he gazed around.
The murals were divided into panels, and each presented handsome male nudes intertwined in passionately carnal acts. The sheer variety was astonishing. Many of he feats depicted appeared to require considerable athletic ability and several, thought Alec, must have been pure fantasy on the part of the artist.
Dragging his gaze from the paintings, he swiftly took in the occupants of the astonishing chamber. Men of all ages reclined on couches arranged around the room, some embracing casually as they gave their attention to a young lute player by the hearth, others laughing and talking over gaming tables scattered here and there. Couples and small groups came and went up a sweeping staircase at the back of the room. There was no unseemly behavior, but many of them wore little more than long dressing gowns.
He eventually spots Seregil, and oh...
He hadn’t heard Seregil’s voice again since he’d entered, but he saw him now lounging on a couch near the hearth. He had one arm around a handsome, golden-haired young man and they were laughing together over something. As the courtesan turned his head, Alec recognized him—it was the same face Seregil had sketched on the margin of the song. Even from this distance, Alec could see the fellow had green eyes.
His heart did another slow, painful roll as he finally allowed himself to focus on Seregil. His friend wore only breeches beneath his open robe and his dark hair hung disheveled over his shoulders. Slender, lithe, and completely at ease, he could easily have been mistaken for one of the men of the house. In fact, Alec silently admitted, he outshone them all. He was beautiful.
Still rooted where he stood, Alec suddenly felt a strange division within himself. The old Alec, northern red and callow, wanted to bolt from this strange, exotic place and the sight of his friend stroking that golden head as absently as he’d petted the cat a few hours earlier. But the new Alec, Alec of Rhiminee, stood fast, caught by the elegant decadence of the place as his ever-present curiosity slowly rekindled.
Well, maybe Alec is figuring a few things out too.
He ends up stumbling over an explanation (true of course) that he thought he saw his friend here. Azarin encourages him to stay a while, and discreetly summons a...friend.
“Tirien will attend you in my absence,” said Azarin. Giving the two of them a final, approving look, he disappeared back into the vestibule. “Well met, young sir,” Tirien greeted him.
Thick black hair, glossy as a crow’s wing, framed his face and a soft growth of new beard edged the hollows of his cheeks. His smile seemed genuinely friendly. He was dressed in breeches, boots, and a loose shirt of fine linen; for a moment Alec mistook him for a noble. The illusion was shattered, however, when Tirien stepped closer and said, “There’s a couch free near the fire, if you like. Or would you prefer to go up at once?”
For one awful moment Alec was speechless; what in Illior’s name was he to do? Glancing past Tirien’s shoulder, his eyes happened to fall on one of the panels. The young prostitute turned to follow his gaze, then smiled.
“Oh, yes, I’m quite good at that. As you can see, though, we’ll need a third man.”
Oh dear.
Around this time, Seregil does spot Alec. He realizes immediately that Alec stumbled in by accident. He thinks he should rescue him...and then decides maybe to wait and see what happens. It's a dick move, but maybe appropriate. Seregil's made a lot of decisions without really considering what Alec might think or want. Maybe this is a good opportunity for Alec to decide some things for himself.
We get a parallel moment to Alec noticing Seregil's sudden hotness:
A quick glance around the room confirmed that Alec was attracting the notice of other patrons, as well.
And no wonder, Seregil thought with a stab of something dangerously close to possessiveness. For a moment he allowed himself to see Alec through the eyes of the others: a slim, somberly dressed youth whose heavy, honey-dark hair framed a finely featured face and the bluest eyes this side of a summer evening sky. He stood like a half-wild thing, poised for flight, yet his manner toward the young prostitute was almost courtly.
Tirien leaned closer to Alec and the boy’s mask of composure slipped a bit, betraying—what? Alarm, certainly, but hadn’t there been just a hint of indecision? This time Seregil couldn’t deny the hot flash of jealousy that shot through him. Thoroughly annoyed with himself, he began disentangling himself from Wythrin.
It's going to take like another hundred chapters for you to finally get your act together, Seregil. I know your type.
We switch to Alec, who's realized that a country virgin (or close enough, Ylinestra aside) is a pretty rare and valuable novelty in Rhiminee. Hah, I'd bet. He does have the fleeting thought that Tirien is attractive, which is quite promising. That said, being attracted doesn't mean he's quite ready for this. And Seregil does finally come to his rescue, gently extracting him from Tirian.
Alec is definitely overwhelmed at the moment. He explains what happened: he'd heard Seregil, became curious, hadn't checked the lantern. He thinks he might head home, but Seregil decides to show him somewhere "more to his liking."
It's a place with a pink lantern, which Alec notices with some relief. Seregil is well known here as well, and Alec notes that the establishment is similar to Azarin's, except with beautiful ladies as opposed to gentlemen. I have to admit, I did forget that Seregil is bi rather than gay. I should keep that in mind.
Anyway, the hostess greets Seregil very warmly while Alec finds companionship pretty quickly. (The hostess, Eirual, compliments his taste.) Seregil seems pretty pleased himself.
Myrhichia glided over, wrapped in perfume and mystery. She was older than Alec had supposed, older than he, but that didn’t matter—there was something familiar about her, something that made him wave aside the offer of wine and let her lead him up the stairs to her room.
It wasn’t until she turned to speak to him over her shoulder that he realized how much she resembled Seregil, or rather Seregil as he’d looked playing Lady Gwethelyn aboard the Darter. It was an unsettling revelation and he did his best to put it out of his mind as they entered her chamber.
...that's pretty bi of you, Alec. Just saying. But also hilarious. I also enjoy that funny little thread throughout this and Luck in the Shadows - whenever Alec meets someone who is clearly the basis for one of Seregil's disguises. (Like Thyris for his old woman disguise, or Thero for Aren Windover.)
So anyway, things seem to go quite well. As Alec furthers his education, Seregil spends some time with the madam, Eirual. There's some interesting backstory here: she's half Zengati, an old neighbor/enemy of the Aurenfaie. He'd had some thought of rescuing her from sex work, but she actually really liked her job. She intended to own a brothel herself one day, like her mother and grandmother. Seregil respected that and they stayed friends. Now, of course, she's succeeded.
She's also got information for him: one of her recent patrons, a newcomer, had a letter from Lord General Zymanis fall out of his packet. (She can vouch for the authenticity since the general is a ...friend, who chipped his ring against a bedpost two months before. There's a very faint flaw in the impression.
She's not sure her new friend ought to have such a letter, especially as it's addressed to a Lord Admiral. She thinks the Rhiminee Cat would be interested and playfully tries to angle an opportunity to meet him. Seregil is apparently known to be an agent of his, which is amusingly convoluted. He likes to give contradictory descriptions of the Cat. Because of course he does.
Anyway, they have a good night too.
And we get a ship tease, when Seregil goes to collect Alec from a pouting Myrhichia.
Ignoring the courtesan’s simmering displeasure, Seregil leaned down and shook him by the shoulder. Alec stirred drowsily, murmuring something amorous as he reached to pull Seregil into bed.
When his fingers encountered wool rather than whatever he’d been dreaming of, however, he snapped fully awake.
Aww. Seregil apologizes for the timing and says they have a job. Alec, to his credit, is a bit exasperated by the timing. Seregil does give him time to get dressed. And by that, I mean, have one final amorous encounter. Hah, go Alec.
Alec's also pretty enthused once he FINALLY comes down and finds out they're chasing a spy instead of a lover's token. The chapter ends here.
Our boy's growing up.
Anyway, last time, our heroes were hanging out with Micum in Watermead. Seregil has come to a few realizations, it seems. Of course, he hasn't seen fit to share said realizations with his partner...
This chapter starts by telling us that Alec and Seregil spend three days at Watermead, before sneaking back into the city and to the Cockerel at night. Runcer, we're told, will keep things up at the Wheel Street manor - Lord Seregil's in town but not always available.
...so why sneak in? If the official story is that Seregil is in town, why not enter normally?
I suppose they'd have to sneak over to the Cockerel anyway, though.
Alec definitely seems much more comfortable at the Cockerel than at Wheel Street. We also find out the exact translation for the Aurenfaie password that Seregil uses to access their rooms: "Your grandmother insults the chickens" and "Raspberries, saddle". "Almost."
Alec is pretty amused. He'd once thought the phrases sounded magical.
The last word IS significant though: Bokthersa. That's Seregil's birthplace and kinda-sorta last name.
Seregil is surprised to see that the place has been cleaned up. Alec had done it before he'd left for Wheel Street, when Seregil had been on that mission. He'd done it so he can cross the room safely, having an apparent dislike of stepping on sharp objects or having things fall on his head.
This is pretty cute and domestic:
Seregil collapsed on the sofa in front of the fire. “You know, it strikes me that this is all a bit of a comedown for you. After having your own chamber, I mean. Perhaps we should think about expanding our accommodations here. There are empty rooms on either side of us.”
“Don’t bother on my account.” Yawning, Alec crossed his arms behind his head. “I like things just as they are.”
Seregil smiled up at the shadow of a dusty cobweb wavering overhead. “So do I, now that you mention it.”
Aww.
The downside is that, apparently, jobs are scarce at the moment. Well, yeah, I'd guess they would be. You guys were spending all your time in Wheel Street! How do your clients even know when you're available?
It's also an incredibly dreary late winter. Seregil is getting bored and restless. Alec doesn't seem to have quite as much trouble occupying himself - which makes sense, his life as a hunter probably had a fair amount of forced inactivity due to weather and other factors. But Seregil's restlessness makes it hard to concentrate. Alec finally breaks and suggests that they do some shooting in the back court.
Seregil is apologetic, and decides to go out and get some air instead. Alec offers to go with him, but Seregil demurs. Alec is puzzled: except for that one trip, Seregil usually takes him along. He's not acting like he has a job right now. Alec looks at the parchment that Seregil had been trying to write:
Shelter awhile this poor tattered heart. Cool my brow with your kiss.
Tell me, my love, you will lie with me only. Lie to me all night like this. Sweet is the night, but bitter the waking When the sun harries me home.
Others there’ll be, who drink at your fountain While I toss cold and alone. Yellow as gold, the hair on your pillow, Green as cold emeralds, your eyes.
Dear as the moon, the cost of your favors, Below this half a dozen lines had been struck out with what appeared to be increasing frustration.
The margins of the sheet were filled with half-completed sketches and designs-Illior’s crescent, a perfectly drawn eye, circles, spirals, arrows, the profile of a handsome young man. In the lower left coiner was a quick but unmistakable sketch of Alec scowling comically over his books, which Seregil must have drawn from his reflection in the windowpane.
Ohhh, Seregil is horny.
And Alec is definitely oblivious, because he does not remotely connect the song lyrics with his portrait.
Come to think of it, he’d been restless at Watermead, as well. Those nights they’d shared the guest chamber bed, his friend had often tossed and muttered in his sleep. He hadn’t done that before.
What secrets was he wrestling with?
“Or maybe he’s just pining for his green-eyed mistress?” Alec speculated aloud, scanning the parchment again with an amused chuckle.
Oh, you dear, sweet idiot.
Eventually, Alec realizes that he can go out himself. He starts to head out, though he ends up running into Cilia: the young mother who works at the inn. She's nursing her baby, and we see another glimpse of Alec not being entirely okay with things, when he thinks about how his experience with Ylinestra has altered his reaction to such sights. He feels guilty.
Cilia doesn't seem to notice, but does have him hold baby Luthas for a second so she can switch breasts. Alec definitely gets an eyeful and doesn't know completely how to process it. Though he feels a guilty sort of pleasure replaying it in his mind later.
Ahh, maybe not so asexual after all. Well then!
Alec takes a walk, and finds himself somewhere rather interesting:
Across the busy circle, beyond the pale, templelike fountain colonnade, stood the gracious arch that marked the entrance to the Street of Lights. He’d been down this street many times on the way to the theater and gambling houses there, and Seregil had often jested about stopping in at a brothel afterward, but somehow it had never happened.
He’d never imagined it would. Until now.
The colored lanterns—rose, amber, green, and white—glowed softly through the mist, each color signifying what sort of companionship was available within. Rose meant women for men, he knew, and white was women for women; amber meant a house for women, too, but the prostitutes there were male.
Most enigmatic of all, however, was the green lantern, signifying male companions for male patrons. Worse yet, some houses showed several colors at once.
Enigmatic implies a certain interest, doesn't it? But I think Alec probably needs to work his way up to that. He's got some social programming to work through first, I think.
So anyway, Alec tries to tell himself not to be nervous, while he's pretty obviously nervous. He's not really sure where to go - the color of a lantern is not a lot to go on. Then he hears something interesting:
No doubt Seregil could have suggested a few likely places, but that wasn’t much good to him now. At last, he settled on a house near the middle of the street for no better reason than that he liked the carvings on the door. Just as he was about to go in, however, a door swung open across the street and a group of young men spilled out in a flood of light and music. A man was singing inside, and the voice stopped Alec in his tracks. The clear, lilting tenor was unmistakably Seregil’s.
“Yellow as gold, the hair on your pillow, Green as cold emeralds, your eyes. Dear as the moon, the cost of your favors, But priceless, the sound of your sighs. Well, well! So here you are, thought Alec. And you figured out that last line, too.
Alec wonders "what role [Seregil is] playing", which is an interesting way to look at it. When he creeps his way into the building, he is greeted by the host, a handsome man named Azarin. Azarin is quite welcoming and Alec notices something he missed: the lantern is green.
Ahh. Well. This might be a bit of an eye-opener indeed.
Green, he thought numbly, heart tripping a beat as he gazed around.
The murals were divided into panels, and each presented handsome male nudes intertwined in passionately carnal acts. The sheer variety was astonishing. Many of he feats depicted appeared to require considerable athletic ability and several, thought Alec, must have been pure fantasy on the part of the artist.
Dragging his gaze from the paintings, he swiftly took in the occupants of the astonishing chamber. Men of all ages reclined on couches arranged around the room, some embracing casually as they gave their attention to a young lute player by the hearth, others laughing and talking over gaming tables scattered here and there. Couples and small groups came and went up a sweeping staircase at the back of the room. There was no unseemly behavior, but many of them wore little more than long dressing gowns.
He eventually spots Seregil, and oh...
He hadn’t heard Seregil’s voice again since he’d entered, but he saw him now lounging on a couch near the hearth. He had one arm around a handsome, golden-haired young man and they were laughing together over something. As the courtesan turned his head, Alec recognized him—it was the same face Seregil had sketched on the margin of the song. Even from this distance, Alec could see the fellow had green eyes.
His heart did another slow, painful roll as he finally allowed himself to focus on Seregil. His friend wore only breeches beneath his open robe and his dark hair hung disheveled over his shoulders. Slender, lithe, and completely at ease, he could easily have been mistaken for one of the men of the house. In fact, Alec silently admitted, he outshone them all. He was beautiful.
Still rooted where he stood, Alec suddenly felt a strange division within himself. The old Alec, northern red and callow, wanted to bolt from this strange, exotic place and the sight of his friend stroking that golden head as absently as he’d petted the cat a few hours earlier. But the new Alec, Alec of Rhiminee, stood fast, caught by the elegant decadence of the place as his ever-present curiosity slowly rekindled.
Well, maybe Alec is figuring a few things out too.
He ends up stumbling over an explanation (true of course) that he thought he saw his friend here. Azarin encourages him to stay a while, and discreetly summons a...friend.
“Tirien will attend you in my absence,” said Azarin. Giving the two of them a final, approving look, he disappeared back into the vestibule. “Well met, young sir,” Tirien greeted him.
Thick black hair, glossy as a crow’s wing, framed his face and a soft growth of new beard edged the hollows of his cheeks. His smile seemed genuinely friendly. He was dressed in breeches, boots, and a loose shirt of fine linen; for a moment Alec mistook him for a noble. The illusion was shattered, however, when Tirien stepped closer and said, “There’s a couch free near the fire, if you like. Or would you prefer to go up at once?”
For one awful moment Alec was speechless; what in Illior’s name was he to do? Glancing past Tirien’s shoulder, his eyes happened to fall on one of the panels. The young prostitute turned to follow his gaze, then smiled.
“Oh, yes, I’m quite good at that. As you can see, though, we’ll need a third man.”
Oh dear.
Around this time, Seregil does spot Alec. He realizes immediately that Alec stumbled in by accident. He thinks he should rescue him...and then decides maybe to wait and see what happens. It's a dick move, but maybe appropriate. Seregil's made a lot of decisions without really considering what Alec might think or want. Maybe this is a good opportunity for Alec to decide some things for himself.
We get a parallel moment to Alec noticing Seregil's sudden hotness:
A quick glance around the room confirmed that Alec was attracting the notice of other patrons, as well.
And no wonder, Seregil thought with a stab of something dangerously close to possessiveness. For a moment he allowed himself to see Alec through the eyes of the others: a slim, somberly dressed youth whose heavy, honey-dark hair framed a finely featured face and the bluest eyes this side of a summer evening sky. He stood like a half-wild thing, poised for flight, yet his manner toward the young prostitute was almost courtly.
Tirien leaned closer to Alec and the boy’s mask of composure slipped a bit, betraying—what? Alarm, certainly, but hadn’t there been just a hint of indecision? This time Seregil couldn’t deny the hot flash of jealousy that shot through him. Thoroughly annoyed with himself, he began disentangling himself from Wythrin.
It's going to take like another hundred chapters for you to finally get your act together, Seregil. I know your type.
We switch to Alec, who's realized that a country virgin (or close enough, Ylinestra aside) is a pretty rare and valuable novelty in Rhiminee. Hah, I'd bet. He does have the fleeting thought that Tirien is attractive, which is quite promising. That said, being attracted doesn't mean he's quite ready for this. And Seregil does finally come to his rescue, gently extracting him from Tirian.
Alec is definitely overwhelmed at the moment. He explains what happened: he'd heard Seregil, became curious, hadn't checked the lantern. He thinks he might head home, but Seregil decides to show him somewhere "more to his liking."
It's a place with a pink lantern, which Alec notices with some relief. Seregil is well known here as well, and Alec notes that the establishment is similar to Azarin's, except with beautiful ladies as opposed to gentlemen. I have to admit, I did forget that Seregil is bi rather than gay. I should keep that in mind.
Anyway, the hostess greets Seregil very warmly while Alec finds companionship pretty quickly. (The hostess, Eirual, compliments his taste.) Seregil seems pretty pleased himself.
Myrhichia glided over, wrapped in perfume and mystery. She was older than Alec had supposed, older than he, but that didn’t matter—there was something familiar about her, something that made him wave aside the offer of wine and let her lead him up the stairs to her room.
It wasn’t until she turned to speak to him over her shoulder that he realized how much she resembled Seregil, or rather Seregil as he’d looked playing Lady Gwethelyn aboard the Darter. It was an unsettling revelation and he did his best to put it out of his mind as they entered her chamber.
...that's pretty bi of you, Alec. Just saying. But also hilarious. I also enjoy that funny little thread throughout this and Luck in the Shadows - whenever Alec meets someone who is clearly the basis for one of Seregil's disguises. (Like Thyris for his old woman disguise, or Thero for Aren Windover.)
So anyway, things seem to go quite well. As Alec furthers his education, Seregil spends some time with the madam, Eirual. There's some interesting backstory here: she's half Zengati, an old neighbor/enemy of the Aurenfaie. He'd had some thought of rescuing her from sex work, but she actually really liked her job. She intended to own a brothel herself one day, like her mother and grandmother. Seregil respected that and they stayed friends. Now, of course, she's succeeded.
She's also got information for him: one of her recent patrons, a newcomer, had a letter from Lord General Zymanis fall out of his packet. (She can vouch for the authenticity since the general is a ...friend, who chipped his ring against a bedpost two months before. There's a very faint flaw in the impression.
She's not sure her new friend ought to have such a letter, especially as it's addressed to a Lord Admiral. She thinks the Rhiminee Cat would be interested and playfully tries to angle an opportunity to meet him. Seregil is apparently known to be an agent of his, which is amusingly convoluted. He likes to give contradictory descriptions of the Cat. Because of course he does.
Anyway, they have a good night too.
And we get a ship tease, when Seregil goes to collect Alec from a pouting Myrhichia.
Ignoring the courtesan’s simmering displeasure, Seregil leaned down and shook him by the shoulder. Alec stirred drowsily, murmuring something amorous as he reached to pull Seregil into bed.
When his fingers encountered wool rather than whatever he’d been dreaming of, however, he snapped fully awake.
Aww. Seregil apologizes for the timing and says they have a job. Alec, to his credit, is a bit exasperated by the timing. Seregil does give him time to get dressed. And by that, I mean, have one final amorous encounter. Hah, go Alec.
Alec's also pretty enthused once he FINALLY comes down and finds out they're chasing a spy instead of a lover's token. The chapter ends here.
Our boy's growing up.